Staying Together

  “How am I cheating her if she doesn’t even know what happened?”

  “It’s the principle of the thing.”

  “You know what, Flora? Shut up, okay? Just shut up. You talk to me like you’re some kind of professor or lawyer, using words you know I don’t understand. Do you like making me feel like a stupid little kid?”

  “Do you like making Min feel — let me see, how can I say this so you’ll understand? I was going to say ignorant, but instead I’ll say clueless. Is that better? Do you like making Min feel like a clueless old lady, someone you can cheat? You do know what cheat means, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I know what cheat means.”

  “Well, I don’t know if that’s good or bad. My own little sister actually knows what cheat means and still thinks it’s all right to cheat the person who’s been taking care of her for the last two years. Min shifted her whole life around for us, Ruby. She was getting ready to retire. Her kids were all grown up, and then we came along and without one single complaint she picked up and kept on going. She put off retiring, she made a life for us here in her home —”

  “Which is exactly why I don’t want to upset her. You know, Flora, I think you’re the selfish one. You talk about principles and everything, but if I tell Min the truth, she’s just going to be sad. You want me to make her sad? Min’s going to start thinking about Mom and the accident —”

  “Don’t you think she thinks about those things all the time anyway? I do. But maybe you’ve forgotten.”

  “Forgotten!” Ruby edged out of Min’s room and down the hallway. Flora followed her. “Well, now you’re just being stupid.”

  Flora stopped in her tracks. “I’m stupid. Huh. I’m. Stupid. The one who gets nearly straight A’s. I’m stupid.”

  “There are different kinds of smart, Flora. Maybe you’re smart in school, but right now you’re being stupid about someone’s feelings.” Ruby paused. “And maybe I don’t just mean Min’s.” She stomped into her bedroom and slammed her door shut.

  Flora stomped into her own room and slammed her own door. Then she opened it, leaned into the hall, and yelled, “Don’t think this is over.” She slammed the door again.

  Ruby opened her door, couldn’t think of anything to say to that, finally shouted, “Snob!” and closed her door.

  “Cheater!” cried Flora from within her room.

  “Show-off!”

  Flora didn’t want to prove Ruby’s point by coming up with a smart reply, so she flung herself on her bed and stared at the ceiling, fuming. After a while, she brought the phone into her room, closed her door again, and called Olivia. The moment Olivia answered, Flora said, “I am never speaking to Ruby again.”

  “Oh, no. Please don’t say that,” was Olivia’s reply. “You don’t really mean it, do you?”

  Flora paused. “Well, it would be pretty hard never to speak to her again. I mean, we do live in the same house. But that’s how mad I am.”

  “What happened?” asked Olivia.

  “I can’t say.”

  “Why not? We tell each other everything.”

  “This is … I’ll tell you sometime. But not yet. I have to think about how to handle this. Ruby has really done it.”

  “Boy,” said Olivia. “I hope you never get mad at me.”

  By the time Min came home from Needle and Thread, Flora had finished getting dinner ready, and Ruby, still sticking to her self-improvement plan, had set the table. These things had been done in complete silence, except for when Ruby opened the cupboard where the glasses were kept and accidentally bumped Flora’s shoulder, and Flora had cried, “Quit touching me!”

  “I thought you weren’t speaking to me,” said Ruby.

  “And how would you know that unless you were eavesdropping on my phone conversation with Olivia?”

  “You have a very loud voice,” replied Ruby. (This was not true.)

  “Well, anyway, stay away from me.”

  “You stay away from me.”

  “That would be my pleasure.”

  A few minutes later, when Flora heard Min at the front door, she said, “Do not let Min know we’re fighting. She doesn’t need that.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” replied Ruby.

  “That’s just because you don’t want her to find out about the owl. I, on the other hand, don’t want to give her anything else to worry about it.”

  “On the other hand! What do you think I’ve been trying to do all this time? Anyway, I thought you weren’t speaking to me.”

  “I’m not speaking to you starting right … now,” said Flora as Min stepped into the kitchen.

  “The table looks lovely, girls,” said Min. “Thank you for making dinner.”

  “I set the table,” announced Ruby.

  “I made the pasta,” added Flora.

  “Well, it’s all very professional.”

  Flora waited until everyone was seated and had been served and then she said, “Guess what.”

  Ruby looked suspiciously at her.

  “What?” said Min, reaching for the salad dressing.

  “I’m going to have my first true baby-sitting job for Janie.”

  “Really?” said Min, smiling at her granddaughter.

  “Yup. On Thursday, Aunt Allie has an appointment with Dr. Malone. She says she’ll only be gone for an hour or so and she asked me to baby-sit. I’ll be completely in charge and I’ll get paid.”

  “Gracious,” said Min. “That’s really something, honey.” Min glanced at Ruby, who was staring stonily into her glass of water.

  “Yup, a real sitting job,” said Flora again.

  “I started rehearsing my solo,” Ruby spoke up. “You know, for the fund-raiser for the Children’s Chorus. It’s hard to believe that just a few weeks ago I was on probation, and now I have a solo. For the fund-raiser.”

  “Yes, lots of good news,” agreed Min. “You two should be very proud of yourselves.”

  “Huh,” said Flora, and Ruby took a swallow of water and started to cough.

  By Thursday afternoon, Flora and Ruby had spoken to each other exactly twice. They’d spoken many times to Min in each other’s presence, but their direct conversation had consisted of the following:

  On Tuesday morning, Flora had tripped over Ruby’s backpack, which was sitting in the middle of the upstairs hall. “Ruby!” she had yelled. “I nearly killed myself on that thing.”

  “Oh, darn,” Ruby had replied. “Then it didn’t work.”

  On Wednesday, Ruby had come running into the Row House and had collided with Flora in the front hall. It had been on the tip of Ruby’s tongue to say, “Sorry.” Instead, she said, “Can’t you even stay out of my way?”

  And Flora had replied, “That’s a little hard to do when a buffalo comes through the door.”

  Then they had stuck their tongues out at each other, swiveled their heads around, and stomped off in different directions.

  Now it was Thursday, the day of Flora’s baby-sitting job, and she was determined that nothing would spoil this wonderful afternoon. For that reason, she was relieved that she wouldn’t see Ruby after school. Ruby had a dance class, so Flora rode her bicycle peacefully to Aunt Allie’s house. She noticed as she pedaled along that the first hint of green was appearing on the trees, that tulips were blooming in many yards, and that the buds on the azalea bushes were growing fat.

  Fat buds made her think of fatheads, which of course made her think of Ruby, so she steered her mind in another direction. She thought about Willow Hamilton and wondered what would happen when Mrs. Hamilton came home at the end of the month. Flora knew Willow was nervous about the return of her mother, and she couldn’t blame her. Mrs. Hamilton made Flora feel uneasy, and she wondered just how much Willow’s mother could have changed in the past few months.

  Flora turned a corner and spotted Allie’s house. She saw her aunt sitting on the front stoop with Janie, who was bundled into her stroller.

  “Hi!” called Flora as she coa
sted up the driveway and laid her bicycle on the lawn.

  Her aunt got to her feet, smiling. “Are you ready for this? Ready to be in charge?”

  “Absolutely. Don’t worry one bit. Janie and I will be great. We’re going to have lots of fun, aren’t we, Janie?”

  Flora peered at her cousin, who grinned at her from the stroller and said, “Ba!”

  “Well …” said Aunt Allie, and Flora had a feeling that a very long good-bye scene might be coming up.

  “Hey!” exclaimed Flora. “Aunt Allie, your appointment is in fifteen minutes. You’d better get going.”

  “Okay. You know where I’ll be. And where the emergency numbers are. And where Min is.”

  “And of course I know that Mr. Barnes is right across the street,” added Flora, glancing eagerly at the house of her English teacher. Her single and very cute English teacher, who would be the perfect husband for Allie and the perfect father for Janie.

  Allie drove off then, and Flora sat on the stoop and faced her cousin. “It’s just you and me,” she told her. “Ready for a walk? Oh, look. There’s Mr. Barnes now. Let’s go say hi.”

  Flora thoroughly enjoyed her afternoon with Janie, not to mention the bills that Allie folded into her hand later. She was more than halfway back to the Row Houses before she realized that she hadn’t thought about Ruby in almost two hours.

  Robby Edwards stood in front of the full-length mirror in his bedroom and studied his reflection. He was wearing a new suit and a new shirt but not new shoes. He had polished his shoes, though, and he thought he looked very nice and very grown-up. Except for the tie. He couldn’t remember how to tie it and he was going to need help. For now, it hung loosely around his neck.

  “Okay,” said Robby. “Okay.”

  He leaned toward the mirror and took another look at the tie. He had chosen the one with footballs and baseballs on it. Maybe that was the wrong kind of tie for a dance. Maybe girls didn’t like boys who wore sports ties. And also, maybe his parents should have gotten him new shoes after all, but his father had said the old ones really were fine as long as Robby polished them.

  Robby frowned. Then he opened his closet and looked at his tie rack. He saw the tie with the Thanksgiving turkeys on it and the tie with the Christmas trees on it and the tie with the elephants on it and the tie that said HOME RUN all over it. And he saw the three ties that were just stripes. Robby pulled out the striped ties and ran downstairs with them.

  “Mom! Mom!”

  “Robby, goodness, what is it?” asked Mrs. Edwards, who was working at her computer in the den.

  “Look at me! I can’t tie my tie and I don’t know which tie anyway and Dad said to polish my shoes but I don’t want to wear black shoes. I want brown ones.”

  “Honey, calm down. First of all, you don’t have brown shoes and we don’t have time to go to the shoe store. We need to leave for the dance in twenty minutes. It starts at three o’clock. So the ones you’re wearing will have to do. But you did a great job polishing them.”

  “Thanks,” said Robby without smiling.

  “All right. As for a tie, how about the one with blue stripes? They match the blue in your suit perfectly.”

  “Okay.”

  Robby stood still while his mother tied the tie. When she stood back, she announced, “Stunning!”

  “Is that a good thing?” asked Robby.

  “Absolutely. You look wonderful. Just think. Your first dance.”

  “Mom? What if there are no other kids with Down syndrome there?”

  “Honey, the dance is at Mountain View. That’s where the Special Olympics are going to be held. And that’s where we’ve signed you up for volleyball. Mountain View is a place for all kinds of special kids, including kids with Down syndrome.”

  “What if I don’t know anyone there?”

  “But you will. I talked to Daniel’s mom and he’s going. And I’m pretty sure Rachel and Jason and Austin are going, too.”

  “Okay.” Robby headed for the stairs. “I’ll be right back. I need a few minutes of privacy time.”

  Robby closed the door to his room quietly and stood once more in front of the mirror. A dance, he thought as he looked at the shoes that were not brown and then at the striped tie. When Robby had been a student at Camden Falls Central High School, there had been lots of dances, but he hadn’t gone to any of them. Most of the kids in school had been nice enough to him, but some had not been nice, and Robby hadn’t wanted to risk seeing them at the dances. He hadn’t wanted to hear their comments, either. Once, in the hallway, a boy he didn’t know had said, “I bet you can’t even put your own shoes on,” which wasn’t true, but Robby hadn’t been sure what he should say back, so he had said nothing, and then the kid had slapped Robby’s books out of his hands, and then he had said, “Why are you carrying all those around if you can’t read them?” which wasn’t a true thing, either, since Robby was the best reader in his class.

  Robby was also exceptionally good at memorizing and had memorized a whole book of baseball facts, which was probably something the mean kid couldn’t have done. But Robby wasn’t sure how to say that, so he had just stood there until Margaret Malone had come along and picked up his books and smiled at him and walked him to his classroom.

  Robby wished Margaret were going to the dance at Mountain View, but she was not. She was at work at her new after-school job, and in the fall she was going to college.

  “Robby?” called his mother from downstairs.

  Robby drew in a deep breath, let it out slowly, and said, “Coming!”

  On the drive to Mountain View, which was exactly twenty-six minutes long, Robby’s mother said to him, “I’ll be right next door in the lounge, having coffee with Daniel’s mother, if you need anything, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Do you remember how to ask someone to dance with you?”

  Robby nodded. “Yes. I say, ‘Would you like to dance?’ and if she says no, then I say, ‘That’s okay,’ and I don’t push things. But if she says yes, then I take her to the dance floor and we dance but we don’t touch.”

  “You can put your arm around her waist,” said his mother.

  “No. That’s okay.”

  Mrs. Edwards smiled. “All right. And when the music stops, what do you do?”

  “I say, ‘Thank you for the dance.’”

  “Perfect. And maybe then you ask her if she’d like some refreshments.”

  “Okay.” Robby closed his eyes. Then he opened them suddenly and exclaimed, “Mom, I’ve been waiting for this day my whole life!”

  “Look, Robby!” said his mother as they pulled up in front of Mountain View.

  A banner with the words SPRING FLING in pink and yellow and green letters had been strung over the front doors of the building.

  “Excellent!” cried Robby.

  His mother parked the car and they walked across the gravel lot to the wooden building that Robby always thought looked like a giant cabin. As they approached the front doors, Robby saw two girls wearing dresses that came down to their ankles, shawls draped across their shoulders.

  “Very sparkly,” Robby whispered to his mother. And then he added, “I think one of them has Down syndrome like me.”

  Robby and his mother followed the girls into the building. The lobby was crowded with young men in suits and young women in gowns and parents holding cups of coffee. Robby peeked into the room where the dance was to be held.

  “Whoa, Mom,” he said in a low voice. “You have to look in there. Just look, don’t go in, because you’re my mom and I don’t want anyone to see.”

  Mountain View’s largest room had been transformed. Enormous paper flowers decorated the walls and brilliant paper butterflies hung, fluttering, from the ceiling. A mirrored globe had been placed among the butterflies and pinpoints of light shot around the darkened room. Robby could see a refreshment table along one wall. A young girl handed him a glowing necklace. That was when Robby realized that there were glowin
g ice cubes in a bucket on the table and strings of bumblebee and flower lights everywhere. The entire room sparkled and shimmered and shone.

  “Hi, Robby,” said the girl who was handing out the necklaces, and Robby realized it was his friend Rachel.

  “Rachel! I never saw you in a dress before,” he said. “You look nice.”

  “And you look nice with just plain hair and no baseball cap.”

  “Thanks,” replied Robby. He turned back to his mother.

  “I’ll be right over there,” she told him, pointing in the direction of the lounge. “Have fun.”

  Robby stepped into the room alone. He glanced back once at Rachel, but she was busy handing glow necklaces to the two girls Robby had noticed earlier. Robby took another step forward. All around him kids were standing in groups, talking and eating. He didn’t know any of them. Where was Daniel?

  Robby heard music begin to play. Some of the kids started to dance. Robby looked toward the doors. His mother wasn’t far away. Maybe he should find her and they should just go home.

  “Excuse me, do you want to dance?”

  “What?” said Robby.

  A girl wearing a long yellow dress and silver sandals had put her hand on Robby’s elbow. “Do you want to dance?”

  “Um …”

  “My name is Sarah.”

  “I’m Robby. I’ve never been to a dance before.”

  “Me, neither. Do you want to dance?”

  “Okay.”

  This wasn’t going the way Robby’s parents had said it should go. Sarah had asked Robby to dance, not the other way around. But maybe it didn’t matter. Sarah put one arm on Robby’s shoulder and the other on his waist and he found that he didn’t mind at all. He looked into her eyes, and she looked back at him, and they smiled at each other.

  They began to dance. They danced four dances in a row and then they took a break for punch with glowing ice cubes in it. After that, they sat at a small table and Sarah said that she had graduated from high school the year before.

  “Me, too!” said Robby. “From Camden Falls Central High School.”

  “I went to Kingston High. I have a job,” added Sarah. “I work in the cafeteria. At my old school.”